"Three stars, three stakes, so the passverse claims," said Thayne, crossing one long leg over the other in his creaking wooden chair. Every now and again Ever saw a glint of his strange, frightening blue eyes, like a sliver of sky peeking out over the black glasses. "Three stakes remaining of the faith that became the Blessed people. But there was another."
Stake was an old word, rarely used anymore, for a large territory of the Church. After the Fall, when the Blessed had first fled the Desolation, they divided into stakes for protection and survival.
"There were only three," said Chy. "Everyone knows that."
"Everyone in Bountiful maybe," said Thayne. "Everyone in Camora and Serai too, most likely."
The fact that he knew the names of the other two Blessed communities was worrisome; they were even more clandestine than Bountiful was, being closer to apostate lands, and the faithful in those communities had hidden their holdfasts well.
Thayne leaned forward toward Ever and waggled his fingers upwards into the air as if traveling along a map.
"Far to the north and west, over the vast Desolation that is the remains of the American Empire, there was a territory known as Denali, which in even more ancient times was called Alaska. Great and beautiful it was, and wide and rugged and dangerous—a place of dreams and fantasy and, ultimately, death. Not a place for man."
"What's the point of this?" asked Acel. "Are we supposed to sit here and believe there were more of our people, hidden from us, all this time? Why should we believe anything you tell us?"
"As I've already explained, you shouldn't," said Thayne. "But as you are in my power, you will listen to what I have to say. Whether you decide to believe any of it is a different matter entirely."
Clearing his throat, he continued.
"But since you're all so intent on making this an interactive exercise, tell me, children: where was the Sundering? It's all right, you can tell me, I already know. I just want to know if you know. Let's see what they're teaching you these days in your little bubbles of paradise."
"A town called Lebanon," answered Rolan.
"That's right!" said the Prophet, brandishing his pointer finger in the air over his shoulder as if Rolan were a schoolchild who had solved a math problem.
The history of the Blessed had been passed down from father to son and mother to daughter since the first days after the Fall, though some said that the tale changed in the telling. Everyone knew the Sundering, however; it was, arguably, the most important part of the Blessed's exodus from the West.
"Lebanon, in Missouri," explained Thayne, "was announced, by whatever methods of communication the Old People had at the time, as a meeting place, a rawndayvoo, as they used to say. Those members of the Savior's Church were to meet there by a certain date so that the faithful who survived the Fall and the turmoil afterward would have a place to gather and decide on their next step."
"And so they gathered," said Ever, "four thousand of them, and a great conference was held, and the High Priests decided they would travel east—"
"Even into the very throat of the Fire," said Thayne. "Yes, yes, that's right. And so they split into different groups, to increase the chances that some of them would survive the journey, and traveled east. And thus were born the stakes of Camora, and Serai, and lastly Bountiful.
"But what your parents didn't add to your bedtime stories, my dears, because they didn't know—or didn't care—was that there were others, other faithful, who arrived too late." Thayne paused before continuing.
"And thus begins the story of Ammon."
Thayne touched his forehead, an odd, hesitant swipe, as if he felt ill.
"I was born in the cold, in the dark, where the sun shines at midnight and the moon graces the day. They were late, my ancestors, late in deciding to join the faithful at Lebanon, late in arriving there, late in deciding what to do when it became clear that the Church had moved on without them. Late, even, in finding their final home. The story of their struggle I'll spare you; suffice it to say that years later, a small group of stragglers arrived in the wet, ravaged northwest continued north into Denali. They thought to make their home in the south of that land, where the winters are milder and the fruit of the sea could support them, but they weren't so lucky.
"The land had already been claimed, by a vicious clan of apostates eager to dispatch contenders for their resources. They fought; some died. The survivors fled farther north, where it is not so easy to survive, and Ammon was born.
"I was raised on ice, and salmon and mountain berries, and in fear of the dangers of the wild, for despite being deep in the wilderness my people refused to admit belonging there. They never truly assimilated. They refused the help of the broad-faced natives who still dwell in the far places.
"The priesthood was...weak," continued Thayne, waggling his jaw. "They assumed that food and heat were the worst of their problems. They failed to account for the fact that Denali, too, had its Damned."
Ever heard a sharp scoff from behind Thayne. Chy, who had been pacing around his cell slowly while listening to the Prophet speak, came back to the bars.
"Poor little Prophet," he said. "Had to deal with some Damned. You and everyone else alive."
Thayne appeared to ignore the remark, but Ever thought she saw a twinge in the muscles of his face.
"The larger animals were the most destructive," Thayne said. "The ones that were already vicious became more so. When I was a boy a grizzly got through the gates in the middle of the night. Eight people died."
"You are known as a Saint, in Bountiful," he said, looking at Ever. It wasn't a question. Ever made no response. "I wasn't so lucky."
"The Ammonites grew steadily more fearful of the Damned, and in time they feared all changes brought on by the Fall—changes godly as well as ungodly."
Here Thayne grinned and removed his spectacles. His smile was almost as disconcerting as his eyes; he had a wide mouth full of yellow teeth.
"My eyes didn't change until puberty," he said. "Imagine waking up and having your sister scream at the sight of you. Imagine running to the water bucket, breaking the ice and seeing your reflection in the morning sunlight, an uneven cloud of milky blue obscuring your pupils. But your sight remained. And your family grew afraid, as over the ensuing days that cloud grew, covered your eyes, and you ceased being their child and became something...other.
"They cast me out. A boy, younger than all of you now, a boy without even his first growth of beard, alone in the trackless wild. I called to God, then—I asked the Savior why he and Heavenly Father had forsaken me—but no answer came. I was alone. Utterly, inarguably alone."
"Is this where we're supposed to feel sorry for you?" asked Acel. "Where the people whose families and friends you've just killed are supposed to hear about your terrible childhood and, what...pity you?"
Ever caught the same twinge in the Prophet's jaw, a slight flexing of the muscle at the corner of his cheek, but again he only grinned.
"I pitied myself enough for anyone," Thayne said. "And I soon found that I had...other faculties. I could feel the life around me—use it to my advantage, use it to survive. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and a small knife, but I drew the caribou to me, looked into its eyes. It gave me skins to warm me, meat to nourish me...."
He trailed off, his strange eyes swiveling in their sockets. The lack of pupils made it difficult to tell what he was looking at, even when he was looking straight at you.
"It's ironic, really," he said. "My exile began in the icy North. It was there that I stopped believing in God as you know Him. But it was there, also, that I had my first revelation. The skyfires appeared above me, a dragon of red and green flame writhing in the night sky. I saw them first with my old eyes, but after a few moments it was as if a new set of eyes opened up inside of me and I could see...everything.
"It was years before I completely understood what I was seeing, and that it was truth. The world and everything in it—and more importantly, everything beyond—was an infinity of points." Thayne quirked his head like a dog. "The universe spread out before my eyes and I saw my own place in it. It was both humbling and...empowering. It was difficult, at first, to control the scope of it. But I learned, children."
His eyes rolled smoothly in his head as he said this, sweeping around the room and over her and Acel's faces, but somehow Ever could tell that he wasn't looking at any of it. It was as if he saw beyond the hallway, and the cells, and the trapped young people inside. Azariah Thayne's unsettling eyes tracked something no one else could see, like a blind man finding the sun by its warmth.
"I saw something else that night," he said after a long pause. "Or rather, I felt it with some new organ I didn't know I possessed—can you imagine discovering a new sense? A flash of something, a pulsing light, far in the distance. And I thought, at the time, that it spoke to me...said something, a few words. I couldn't understand. But I felt a person behind it, trying to speak to me."
Thayne stopped again and cocked his head as if he'd heard something. His chin sunk slowly down onto his chest and his eyelids drifted almost shut. When a few breaths had passed and he hadn't moved, Ever looked at Acel worriedly. Thayne barely seemed to be breathing. Disturbed and uncertain, they waited, Ever and Acel standing shoulder to shoulder in the middle of their cell, Rolan and Chy gripping the bars of their own.
Four sets of young Blessed eyes mirroring fear and anxiety watched as Thayne sat, mute and still, his coat draped over the small wooden chair like the wings of a sleeping bat.
"What—" Chy clipped his teeth around the rest of whatever he'd been about to say as Thayne moved. A slight tremor seemed to run through his body; Ever could see a muscle in his angular cheek twitching rapidly.
When he spoke, it was in a voice not his own.
Thayne's own voice was deep and charismatic, the kind of confident baritone that made great Bishops at home in Bountiful. This was something quite different, low and soft, with a strange twang to it, almost feminine but for the very masculine malice Ever sensed underneath every word.
"They stoned us from the walls, darlings," he said. "Sharp rocks bit through the thin clothes they gave us and cut our skin. They shunned us, sent us packin'. Our own mother and sister high on the walls lookin' down as we scrambled off through the hip-deep snows into the endless woods."
Thayne raised his head slowly and looked directly at Ever, his milky blue eyes still and wide.
"And thus began my trial, darlin'. Like the prophets of old. 'They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and caves of the earth.'
"And I wandered, darlins, I wandered: from Denali's high tundra to the wet forests of the giants to the dry mountains and deserts. I wandered, and I sought, and I found."
His eyes flicked between her and Acel now, eager and conspiratorial.
"An' I learned—I picked my way through the ruins of the Old People, digging in the oldest libraries for the remains of the paper books they made before they brought their magic to bear on the word. I even found copies of Scripture—don't look so surprised, my darlins. You should know as well as I by this point that your fathers concealed the world from you as much as they did from me. Didn't you feel it, darlin', darlin' Ever, when you crossed the narrow water yonder and met the slippery denizens of that ruined city-on-the-waves?"
Ever's breath caught in her throat as she recalled the brief, harrowing journey through the Sunken City. What happened little more than a day before already felt like weeks ago. And could he be telling the truth? About any of it?
"All the written copies of Scripture were destroyed in the Purge," Ever said, suddenly uncertain. "Only those hoarded by the faithful escaped destruction for long enough to be...to be remembered, passed down, mouth to ear, from father to son and mother to daughter." The words felt rote on her tongue, the old childhood mantras swimming in her brain, exposed for the first time to uncertainty and question.
"So our fathers said, darlin'," said Thayne. "We Blessed have a better recollection of the Scriptures than most—you'd be shocked to hear how many people today don't even know they existed—but even the Blessed don't got it perfect. Things change in the rememberin'. Words get lost; names get forgotten. Only the ideas remain, the message, the truth—so to speak. We hope. But I've seen the real thing. And it's so much less...inspirin'...when you can hold it in your hot little hands.
"I found God on my own, in my own way, in my own mind, stumbling through the cold darkness amidst the Damned, and I had an epiphany fit to make the Magi blush. A Great Revelation, my darlins."
"Your tongue is foul," said Acel.
"Truth is foul, boy," replied Thayne, an edge to the silky voice. "But it's the Truth that I'll share with you now. If there's a God, it's us; if there's a Prophet, it's me. And if there's any Truth in this world, it's that the strong take from the weak."
"Just as you took everything from Bountiful," said Ever.
"Bountiful received my righteous vengeance, just as Camora and Serai did before it," growled Thayne. " 'And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.' "
He came closer to the bars, then, and grasped them with long, thin fingers. Ever stepped back involuntarily. She felt a strange pressure in her skull.
"You're a monster," said Ever.
"No, child," said Thayne, standing abruptly. "I'm the monster's lord and master. I am the Second Coming. I am He who Sees beyond the veil. And you, Ever Oaks, my darlin', you'll be my bride."
The pressure seemed to burst in her brain and she heard words in her head that echoed and overlapped against the words Thayne spoke into the air: You are my gift to me. Together we will number the stars.
* * *
After Thayne left, Ever sat down on the stone floor of the cell and wondered whether she should feel scared or bewildered. She'd been afraid for long enough now that it was beginning to feel normal—what happened when fear became your default emotion? This was a new kind of fear, though, more subtle, less visceral. It was one thing to fear injury or death and quite another to contemplate the interminable emotional torture of marriage to Azariah Thayne.
"He can't be serious," she said, more to herself than anyone.
"He's obviously insane," said Rolan. Chy agreed heartily. The two young men looked at each other in surprise. After a moment Rolan put a hand on Chy's shoulder.
"I'm sorry. For earlier. It's just—"
"This place," said Chy, clapping Rolan on the back. "I'm sorry too. This place—that man—it's enough to make anyone lose it." Rolan nodded quietly.
"They're right," said Acel. "He's mad. Mad as Elder Hafen on Easter."
"Madder," said Chy.
Ever smiled weakly. Elder Hafen was the oldest living person in Bountiful. He'd been born with the mind of a child. Every Easter he would appear shirtless on the green during Sacrament and rave and trill and laugh at the Spring skies. The Bishopric had given up their attempts to stop it, as trying to restrain him only made it worse.
"The difference is," said Ever, "Elder Hafen was harmless. Azariah Thayne is anything but."
"We're going to get out of here," said Acel. "We just...we just have to be ready when the chance comes."
His voice, his manner, even his hands betrayed the first signs of determination he'd shown since they'd been thrown in the cells. Ever wished she could share it. Thayne's words had shaken her, though. He'd kept his eyes focused on her throughout most of the conversation. His growing obsession matched her growing dread note for note.
"I have to tell you something," Ever said. "Thayne—when he spoke to me—when he came close and looked at me with those eyes. I could hear him. I could hear his thoughts. It's like he was talking to me at the same time he was talking to all of us—a whole separate conversation."
"Ever..." said Acel, his face a mask of concern and poorly concealed disbelief, "this has been a...difficult time for all of us—"
"No, Acel," said Ever. "It was like a...a pressure in my head, that turned into words. We communicated. He spoke to me. It felt just like..."
"Like what?" Rolan prompted from across the hallway.
"Like what happened in the Sunken City," she finished.
"With the dolphin," Rolan said.
"The what?" asked Acel.
"That's what they are, those creatures—or what they were, any way," explained Rolan. "Some kind of big fish, like a leviathan—a whale, but smaller and smarter. The Fall affected them more than most creatures. Nearly all of them are Damned, and unlike most of the Damned that you find in the wild they're—"
"Rolan," said Acel.
"Oh, right. Well I didn't say anything because it's been kind of, you know, hectic since—"
"Rolan," said Acel.
"What?"
"Shut up."
"Oh."
Acel turned to Ever.
"Keep going," he said.
Ever only shook her head.
"The...dolphin said something to me too, but I didn't hear all of it." She was a silent for a beat. "I don't know what's happening to me."
"You're a Saint," Acel said after a long pause. "Who knows what abilities God gave you? Maybe you don't know what all of them are yet."
"What did he mean," said Rolan, "about making Ever his bride?"
"I think it's fairly obvious what he meant, Rolan," said Acel.
"He didn't make a lick of sense the whole time he was talking, if you ask me," said Chy.
"Could he have been telling the truth about Serai and Camora?" asked Ever. The others fell silent.
"How could they have fallen without us hearing anything?" asked Chy.
"Easily," said Acel. "Our Scouts only make the run to Serai once a season. To Camora even less frequently. And with the Marmacks getting aggressive...."
"We didn't send Scouts to the other communities this summer," said Chy. Acel nodded, his face stone.
"Thayne had months to attack Camora and Serai while we were busy skirmishing with his cannon fodder. I wouldn't be surprised if he planned it that way. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure of it."
"That means they didn't get even one Scout out, to send for help," said Rolan. "Or at least, that none of them reached us."
"They probably didn't even see the need," said Acel, pacing around their cell. Ever sat with her back to the wall, hugging her knees to her chest. "If he used the same tactics with them as he did with us, they wouldn't even have suspected the number of men he had until it was too late."
Acel sat down suddenly, across from Ever.
"This is all too much," he said. "I need time to think. But I think we can agree on a couple of things, at least."
"Such as?" asked Ever.
"First, that none of us is going to aid Azariah Thayne willingly. And second, that you, Sister Ballard, need to start being a lot more open about what's going on in your head."
* * *
Several turgid hours had passed and Ever was watching motes of dust floating in the late afternoon sunlight when the door at the end of the hallway scraped open again. Vost entered with Piker and a third Marmack she didn't recognize. Vost neither spoke nor looked at any of them, only approached Rolan and Chy's cell and put a key in the lock.
She saw Rolan and Chy get up and wait, still and nervous, as the lock's aged mechanism crunched and revolved.
Vost entered alone, the other two standing shoulder to shoulder outside the door. Ever grasped the bars of her own cell, her chest suddenly churning with anxiety.
Rolan started forward when Vost took Chy by one thick arm but backed off at a glare from the Marmack captain. Chy tensed at first, seemingly on the verge of struggling, but Vost leaned in and whispered something in his ear. Chy relaxed and his shoulders sagged, apathetic or defeated, and Vost pushed him forward out of the cell into the hands of Piker and the other man. Vost locked up Rolan's cell door as the other two Marmacks shackled Chy and led him out of the cellblock.
"Where are you taking him?" Acel demanded.
"Prophet wants him," Vost said flatly, finishing with the thick steel key and returning it to his pocket.
"For what?" asked Ever.
Vost turned to her and grinned.
"That all depends which one of him's come out to play, now, doesn't it?"
* * *
The Marmacks made sure they heard the screams clearly: the door to the cellblock was left open, and the room they took him to was just down the hall. Chy was gone almost an hour before they began. They were more squeals than screams: high-pitched, abrupt, almost feminine.
Ever gripped the bars of her cell again, the craggy layers of chipped paint digging into the pads of her fingers.
"What are they doing to him? What do they want?"
Acel only shook his head. Rolan had gone to the back of his cell and had his head between his knees.
They tortured him in short bursts, judging by his cries, and after a while the noise stopped altogether. The light from the window slot faded. At around the dinner hour Ever heard muted laughter then and footsteps in the hallway, heading in their direction.
Just outside the cellblock something happened. There was shuffling and grunting, then a Marmack—Piker, she thought, hollered down the far hallway for help.
Ever moved to the far side of their cell, nearest the door, and pressed her face between the bars to see if she could catch a glimpse of what was happening. The concrete block walls that framed the cell jutted out beyond the bars, however, and she couldn't see the door no matter how hard she strained.
She heard a deep growl that sounded like it came from Chy followed by a sound like a venison roast hitting a stone floor. Boots tramped down the hallway toward them and there was another scuffle of some kind, then an awful noise in Piker's voice: a whining roar, followed by a choking gasp from Chy.
Ever felt her eyes burning with tears when Piker and another man dragged Chy bodily back down the cellblock hallway. He seemed to be unconscious. A smear of dark blood followed his body along the floor, livid against the pale concrete in the light of the Marmacks' lanterns.
Rolan caught him when the Marmacks dropped him into the cell and slammed the steel door shut. He stumbled under Chy's weight but managed to lay him on the floor of the cell with an odd tenderness.
Vost entered again. The third Marmack, whom Ever didn't know, addressed him.
"Oughtn't we get him some help, sir?"
Piker snarled and slapped the boy in response.
"Got what he deserved. Big lad like him, shouldn't have any trouble from a little prick in the belly." Piker spat on the floor.
"He fought back," said Vost. "That's his own fault. Besides, Thayne says he's expendable."
Piker pushed the third man out the door. Vost followed after a moment, meeting Ever's eyes as he left.
When they were gone, Ever wasted no time.
"Chy!" she called. Rolan was leaning over him. "Where's he bleeding, Rolan?"
Rolan made an overwhelmed gesture and then started examining him.
"They did something to his fingers, but those are bandaged—most of them at least, though it looks like they could use a change."
"Check his torso," said Ever. "He bled all over the floor when they dragged him in, and Piker said...."
Rolan tugged at Chy's shirt and Chy finally grunted and swatted at Rolan's hand.
"He's got a wound in his stomach," Rolan said. "It looks bad."
"Is it still bleeding?"
"Yes."
"Then you need to put pressure on it," said Ever. "Wad up his shirt or yours and hold it down over the wound. Can you tell how deep it is?"
Chy murmured something and Rolan leaned in to listen.
"Stabbed me," Chy said, louder. "Evil bastard stabbed me. Own fault. Fought them."
Rolan tore the hem off of his own shirt and used it as a compress, pressing down on Chy's belly with both hands. Chy groaned. After a minute he seemed to become more animated.
"What did they want?" asked Rolan. "What did they ask you?"
Chy coughed wetly several times; it took Ever a minute to realize he was laughing.
"Nothing," he said. "They didn't ask me anything. Just taunted me for a while then left me alone. Then Piker came back in with a pair of pliers..."
Chy held up his hands to show Ever and Acel. His fingertips were shoddily bound in blood-soaked cloth.
"What..." said Acel.
"Fingernails," said Chy. Ever forced down nausea.
"None of this makes any sense," said Rolan, still pressing down on Chy's stomach. "Why...torture him for no reason?"
"Who says they don't have a reason?" said Acel, coming forward. "The Prophet's own sick amusement, most likely. Hang in there, Chy."
"Both of you shut up," snapped Ever. "Can you feel his pulse, Rolan?"
"Hold on—yes."
"Is it weak or strong?"
"I'm...I'm not sure. How do I tell?"
"Never mind. Describe to me exactly where the wound is on his belly."
"Level with his navel," said Rolan. "On the right side."
"His right or yours?"
"Mine."
"How big is the wound entrance? Don't look, just try and remember."
"Um...an inch and a half?"
"Alright," said Ever, biting her lower lip and thinking as quickly as possible. "Can you...do you smell anything?"
"Like what?" asked Rolan, obviously confused. It occurred to Ever that she might be the only one of them who understood the potential seriousness of Chy's situation.
"We need to know if his bowels were pierced," she explained.
"So how—oh," Rolan said, suddenly understanding. "No, nothing like that."
Chy himself hadn't spoken in a minute or two.
"Chy?" she called. "Chy, how do you feel?"
"Sleepy," he said after a long delay. "Hit my head pretty hard, too, on the door..." He trailed off.
Ever cursed quietly.
"Rolan," she said. "You can't let him fall asleep. Keep him conscious. Give him some water, if there's any left, and bind his wound around his stomach with whatever cloth you have—the cleaner the better. Tight, but not too tight. You should be able to get a finger under it."
While Rolan started gently slapping Chy's cheeks in an attempt to rouse him, Ever chewed her fingernails and looked at Acel.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"Not as bad as it could be," she said, "but it's still bad. If he doesn't get help...my God, Acel."
Whether it was her demeanor, her voice, or the mild blasphemy, Acel obviously sensed that she was shaken. He took her gently by the shoulders and met her eyes.
"Can't you..." he suggested. She shook her head forcefully.
"I need to touch him," she said. "It only works if I can touch him." Her last words were mangled by a sob that she only barely suppressed. She hid her face and scrubbed at her eyes. The last thing Chy needed was the rest of them breaking down.
"Ever," said Acel. "Look at me."
She looked at him.
"Tell me what to do."
"I...I don't know," she said. "I don't know. Just let me...think. I need to think for a minute."
"Look," he said, whispering. "I know you're scared—"
"I'm not scared," Ever said, more forcefully than she intended. She repeated herself more civilly. "I'm not scared. I'm angry."
And she was. Her anger was like a campfire fed a feast of dry pine needles and firewater; it went from a quiet flame to an uncontrolled blaze in seconds. She was angry, furious, that she'd let herself get caught up in this situation. She was angry at herself that she couldn't reach Chy to help him. She was angry at Acel and Rolan for not knowing what to do when she didn't. And below all of that, consuming it like the white hot coals fueling the cooler flames of that campfire, was a growing hatred of Azariah Thayne that threatened to overwhelm her.
Ever knew in that moment that Acel was right about one thing: the Prophet hadn't done this without purpose. Whatever lunacy ran through his blood, everything he'd done and said to them since bringing them here was to a purpose. That purpose was no longer a mystery. Thayne had told them himself. It was Ever he wanted. Perhaps he knew she would never—what? Join him? Marry him?—willingly, and he'd gone directly to harming her friends to force her to action.
He either knew exactly what he was doing, or he had underestimated her severely. She knew without considering it consciously that she'd let all of them die horribly before she'd submit to Thayne—it was a gut reaction of the kind that she'd come to trust instinctively. It was the Spirit talking to her. Fight, it said, fight to your last breath. Death is only a doorway.
But Thayne would know that's what I'd say, she responded. As insane and unpredictable as he obviously was, the man wasn't stupid. So what did he want from her?
He wants you to reach out to him. He wants you to need him. He wants you to share yourself with him as he has invited you to do.
Thayne must have suspected that the most severe form of torture for her would be to watch her friend suffer without being able to help. Which meant that he knew that her Sainthood abilities included healing. Which meant that he knew even more about them than he'd been letting on.
"Fine, then," she said aloud.
"Fine, what?" said Acel, confused.
Ever only shook her head, seated herself cross-legged on the cell floor, and closed her eyes.
"I need some time," she said to Acel without opening her eyes. "Don't disturb me unless they come back or Chy gets worse."
* * *
With nightfall came Marmack bonfires, large, roaring blazes in the center of every square and at the major entrances to the center of Salem. Several large groups of armed men came into the city with the dusk, trooping down the streets in disorganized, milling crowds.
Two guards were posted outside the courthouse doors, but otherwise the street below the roof Jared was hiding on was empty. The majority of the apostates seemed to be congregating in the large square he had circumnavigated earlier in the day. From the sound of it, they were celebrating something. Jared smiled. It was a grim irony. The cause of their celebration was likely the downfall of his home, and yet the noise of their merrymaking would serve as cover. A horse in belled harness could sneak around undetected with the racket they were making. Let the firewater flow, he thought.
He'd had plenty of time to plan out his route while he sat waiting for the sun to set. It took him only minutes to descend to street level, cross, and disappear into an overgrown grassy area one building down from the courthouse. From there he snuck behind the adjacent building and came up on the courthouse's ruined west wing. There would be no point having guards on the front door if there were an easy way in through the ruined section, but he'd decided it was worth a try. The Marmacks' civil security hadn't impressed him so far; he could only hope they were as lax about their apparent headquarters as they were about Salem in general.
It wasn't as easy to move in the rubble as he'd hoped; for every block of granite or overgrown column section there was an equal amount of gravel and ancient broken glass that tinkled at the slightest touch. The back of the roof had collapsed more dramatically than the front, however, so his movements were concealed from the street side. Behind him there was only the uneven remains of a highway and an ancient, rusting rail yard half consumed by the briny water of the inlet he had passed on his way in.
Jared could smell roasting meat and, just underneath it, the pungent odor of the hemp blossoms they smoked out of crude pipes, all of it rising from the various bonfires into the crisp night air.
The central body of the courthouse extended farther back toward the water than Jared had initially thought, but the broken down wing still seemed the most likely entrance point.
He was scrambling down a tilted island of concrete, a shower of gravel preceding him, when he heard a low growl.
It was too late to arrest his slide. The dog came out of the shadows near the interior of the broken wing into a shaft of moonlight just as he reach the bottom of the slope. It was shorthaired, with a heavy, square head—nothing like the shepherd dogs the Blessed kept. And it was aggressive.
The animal wasted no time. As soon as Jared moved it lunged for him, its powerful chest muscles propelling it across the short distance even quicker than he would have imagined. His hand had barely reached the hilt of his hunting knife, sheathed at his hip, before it was on him.
It was smart and quick, planting its paws on his chest and snapping at his face before he was even able to rise. His knife, half out of its sheath, clattered to the ground. Jared wrapped his hands around the dog's thick neck in a feeble attempt to keep its maw away from his face. Its strength was impressive; he wouldn't be able to hold it off for long. Its ears had been cut down to scarred nubs; there was no purchase to be had there. Getting one booted foot under himself, he heaved awkwardly, managing to unbalance the beast on its hind legs, then twisted and rolled hard to the right.
Glass, twisted metal, and concrete debris dug into his shoulders and sides as he rolled. The dog had already righted itself and leapt toward him again with a coughing growl. He scuttled backwards, kicking rubble at it. He couldn't see what was behind him and he wasn't surprised when his left hand came down hard on a shard of glass. Jared hissed in pain and kicked clumsily at the dog's face. He managed to clip it on the nose, which only seemed to enrage it.
It snapped and got hold of his right ankle before he could move out of the way. The pain was instant and incredible. Its jaws were like a vise; he could feel the bones in his ankle straining under the pressure.
Frantic, he grabbed the nearest object he could find—an arm's length of light metal framework—and brought it down as hard as he could on the animal's flat head. It yelped pathetically, sounding for a split second like a kicked puppy, and let go, ducking its head and turning away from him.
Jared tried to jump to his feet but only made it as far as his knees; his movement aggravated the fresh wound to his ankle, sending thrumming spikes of pain up his leg. Flopping painfully across the ruined scree toward his knife, he caught grip and rolled over just in time to catch the dog as it pounced on him again.
This time he brought the knife upward into the animal's ribcage with all his remaining strength, grinning when he heard its breath hiss sharply inwards. He guarded his face with his left forearm, feeling the jaws bite down weakly, then drove the blade home again and again until the dog's muscles went slack.
Rolling it off himself with no small effort, he lay for a moment looking up at the night sky. The stars were remarkably clear from within the darkened ruin, glittering points of gold on a midnight blue canvas.
The dog whimpered and went still next to him, one thick leg draped across his chest. When he'd caught his breath, Jared propped himself up with his uninjured hand, still gripping his knife, and got painfully to his feet.
Jared looked down at the dead dog with growing alarm. It had attacked him so quickly he'd barely gotten a look at it, and he'd been too concerned with staying alive during the struggle to note its more unusual features.
The thing was enormous—easily twice the size of any dog he'd ever seen in Bountiful. Looking closer, he could see that it was no ordinary dog, either. Damned, he thought, looking at its lumpy, misshapen face. Its musculature was exaggerated, too, and its teeth were crooked and large. The ears had clearly been docked.
Most Damned animals he'd encountered, while often more aggressive than their healthy counterparts, were severely handicapped by the desecration God had wrought upon them. A snarling, feral mountain cat with no bones in its hind legs, for example, or a vicious boar blind as a bat. This thing had all the aggression with none of the damage, vicious and cunning and granted powerful, unholy strength. It almost seemed as if it had been—are they breeding them?
It shouldn't have been possible. Most, if not all of the Damned were supposed to be sterile, or so Jared had been taught. The Word promised swift retribution on those who meddled with the creatures God had chosen to punish with defects of mind and body. But if it was possible.... If it was, then any Marmack with half a brain could breed dogs strategically until he'd gotten a pup with increased strength and aggressiveness and no major health problems. He'd seen shepherds do it with livestock.
It occurred far less often among the Blessed than outside their communities, in the Desolation, but occasionally a Damned animal was born to Blessed stock. The shepherd or farmer would put it down, as a mercy, and to prevent it from passing on its curse to future generations, as the Word mandated.
He shivered at the thought that the Marmacks had fallen so low. Crossing Damned with pure animals? He wiped his bloody blade on the dog's fur and sheathed it.
He was considering whether or not to hide the body when he heard voices and the crunch of footsteps.
Silently cursing himself for a fool, Jared limped as quickly as he could behind the same slanted wall of concrete he'd come in on and tried to make himself as small and quiet as possible.
He could tell there were more than two voices, but not what they were saying. As they grew louder and closer, Jared prayed these Marmacks would be idiots. So far this day he'd underestimated them. He had charged into a Marmack stronghold on the presumption that it was completely unguarded, only to find out the hard way—the very hard way—that it was merely unguarded by men.
He heard the curses and alarm that went up when they found the dog's body; he heard booted feet crunching on glass and gravel.
"These are knife wounds," someone said. The voices were close and clear now. "Fan out. Search the area."
Gritting his teeth, Jaredtried to ignore the growing pain in his ankle and quietly eased his pistol fromits holster.
Thank you for reading!
I know this chapter was a long one, but it had a lot of backstory to lay out.
Look for Chapter 18 on Monday!